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Grace Henry, HRHA 1868 - 1953 | ||
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| Jorgensen Fine Art hosts a welcomed Grace Henry retrospective exhibition January 7th – 27th. As the first wife of Paul Henry, Emily Grace Mitchell has long been in the shadow of her more famous spouse. Born in Aberdeen in 1868, her grandmother was cousin to the poet Lord Byron. After studying in Brussels she worked with André Lhôte in Paris where she met Paul Henry whom she married in 1903. During the early years of her marriage and more especially those years the couple spent on Achill, Grace’s work came under the influence of Paul. From the mid-1920s, when she again spent time in Paris, she came into her own style. The painting considered by many to be her finest, The Girl in White, was painted during this period. This hauntingly evocative work which remembers Whistler, kindly loaned by the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, will be the highlight of the exhibition. Strongly coloured and vigorously painted, White Roses, another highlight of the exhibition, was executed in 1940, a year after The Studio magazine has raised her work to poetic comparisons : ‘As surely as Verlaine wanted his poetry to be all music, she wants her painting to be all poetry…Her drawing is sensitive, her colour invariably harmonious.’ Two years later in the Father Mathew Record Máirín Allen wrote that in her paintings ‘there is reflected the character, the mood of the artist herself; vivacity; at times a youthful, irresponsible gaiety; more often the tender reminiscence of a mood evoked by flowers in a bowl, or sails at Chioggia, or shadowy trees on the banks of the Seine . . .’ With this long overdue exhibition Grace Henry comes out of the shadows to step centre-stage and accept her deserved plaudits. Síle Connaughton-Deeny, 2010 |
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